1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to regenerative heaters and, in particular, to blast furnace stoves.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The preheating of air for blast furnaces is conventionally carried out in adjacent regenerative heaters known as blast furnace stoves. These stoves usually consist of a cylindrical refractory wall having a steel jacket and an internal vertical wall which partitions the stove into a combustion chamber and a checker chamber containing checkerbricks. A mixture of air and fuel is introduced through a burner inlet into the combustion chamber for burning and resultant combustion gases flow first upwardly from the combustion chamber over the vertical partitioning wall, and then downwardly through the checker work chamber until they are finally exhausted at the base of that chamber. After the checkerbricks have reached a sufficiently high temperature, the direction of fluid flow in the stove is reversed. A cold blast is introduced at the base of the checker chamber, and after absorbing heat from the checkerbricks this air passes over the wall and through the combustion chamber until it leaves the stove through a hot blast outlet in the shell of the stove.
Because of the high temperatures present at the hot blast outlet and the burner inlet, these apertures are generally peripherally surrounded by a reinforcing refractory wall consisting of one or more rings of refractory bricks. Heretofore, the shape of this wall has generally been a closed complex curve. In particular, the longitudinal, horizontal center line of such wall has passed through a point at the center of the combustion chamber rather than through the center of the blast furnace stove, itself. It has been found, however, that the building of such a complexly shaped wall into the curved surface of a stove requires a large variety of brick shapes. Consequently, the construction of these walls has proven to be an expensive and time consuming undertaking. It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to provide a peripheral reinforcing wall for a hot blast outlet or a burner inlet which may be economically constructed of a minimal number of brick shapes.